I felt like ET: Briton’s isolation ward ordeal
AN art teacher has told how he was treated by doctors in ‘spaceman suits’ and ‘felt like ET’ after returning from China with suspected coronavirus.
Michael Hope was kept in a sealed hospital room as part of a 28-hour quarantine ordeal amid fears he had brought the virus back from Wuhan where he had been working.
The 45-year-old initially tried to get a GP appointment on Tuesday in Newcastle after the symptoms he was suffering for days became worse and he was ‘coughing to the point of vomiting’ with a ‘really bad chest’.
The next day he had a phone consultation and told the GP he had been unable to leave home due to sickness and the public health authorities were immediately called in.
Doctors from the infectious diseases unit at the city’s Royal Victoria Infirmary told him an ambulance would arrive. ‘I felt like ET, to be honest,’ he said. He opened his door to find two medics in white suits with helmets and visors. ‘They put this nebuliser on me and I was sat in the back of this ambulance with the “spacemen”,’ he told The Guardian.
At the hospital, he was taken to an airlocked isolation unit. He was discharged on Thursday after tests showed he just had flu.
Meanwhile, a British grandmother is trapped in Wuhan with her medication running out following the virus outbreak.
Veronica Theobald, 81, from Lancaster, has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She is visiting her grandson Kharn Lambert and was due to fly back on Monday. He said: ‘She only brought enough medication for her time here plus an extra week in case of any flight delays.’ He said the embassy had put them in touch with a doctor who will be following up on her health after the weekend.